The Spirit Connection: How the Other Side Intervenes in Our Lives

By Dr. Hans Holzer

Schiffer Publishing Ltd. • 4880 Lower Valley Road • Arglen, PA 19310 USA

2008, 128 pages, $14.95 • ISBN: 978-0-7643-2892-3

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

Dr. Hans Holzer is the original Ghost Hunter and a widely recognized authority figure in the field of paranormal studies. The author of over a hundred books, he has hosted and made appearances on such programs as “In Search Of” with Leonard Nemoy. In his latest book, The Spirit Connection, Dr. Holzer strips the subject of spirits and survival of life after death from the clutches of the belief systems of the often fanatical ministers, priests, and wild-eyed cultists and delivers instead evidence gathered from documented and credible eyewitness testimony and scientific methods of investigation and research. He shares with the reader his long and fascinating journey and career, and methodologies and techniques that have worked well for him and others.

Though a common belief among many parapsychologists is that so-called “mediums” and other psychics receive their information through unconscious telepathic processes that alloy them to read other people’s minds, Dr. Holzer points out that in his fifty years of psychical research he had never found so much as a shred of evidence to establish that to be the case. Instead, as in the psychodynamics between a psychic reader and their client, predictions could be documented wherein the psychic somehow knew details about people, names and various situations that were unknown to both of them at that time. Despite the denial of most parapsychologists, who view suggestions that psychics are influenced by forces or beings from another dimension as a pursuit outside of their domain, Dr. Holzer points out that if one pursues this quest in a truly scientific and objective way then the conclusion is inescapable: we are indeed physical beings, but we are “something else” too. That something else, the evidence shows, reaches beyond the physical biological body of a person and upon death proceeds to exist in a parallel world.

Dr. Holzer also outlines a spiritual way of life, complete with standards and behavior you can live 24/7, and how this lifestyle will make you receptive to spiritual help from “the Other Side.”

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UFOs, Time Slips, Other Realms And The Science Of Fairies

By Edwin Sidney Hartland

With additional materials by Tim Beckley, Sean Casteel, Brent Raynes, and Tim R. Swartz

2008, 236 pages, $24.00 • ISBN: 1-60611-010-1

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

The main body of this book was originally published back in 1891 by Edwin Sidney Hartland. Entitled The Science of Fairy Tales, Hartland amassed an impressive and fascinating collection of stories and myths revolving around accounts of fairies, elves, pixies and other mysterious beings of the Fairyworld. As pointed out at the very beginning of this new and expanded version of Hartland’s original creation, it was Dr. Jacques Vallee’s 1969 pioneering classic Passport to Magonia that initially evoked the realization within ufological ranks that there existed quite a variety of thought-provoking parallels between the “little people” of yesteryear and the diminutive entities associated with our modern UFO encounters.

It’s both an honor and a slightly awkward moment to be reviewing a book that contains my own contribution in it. But the contributions made by myself and the other UFO authors in this book are genuine complimentary additions to the inquiry process that Dr. Vallee began nearly four decades ago and represent a sound follow-up course of action in light of the startling parallels that emerge when both categories of data are studied objectively and carefully side by side.

Sean Casteel’s chapter “Fairies And Aliens” (which was chapter one) does a great job of bringing the fairy/alien comparisons into focus for the reader. He quotes a variety of researchers on the subject, and one in particular, attributed to Brad and Sherry Steiger’s UFO Odyssey, sums it all up quite well. They noted: “For the past six decades, various UFO researchers and eyewitnesses to alleged alien activity have been convinced that they had conclusive proof that extraterrestrial beings truly exist. For perhaps the past thousand years, various scholars and eyewitnesses to alleged fairy activity have felt that they have garnered persuasive evidence that the Little People exist.”

The Steiger’s note how the fairies, like the ufonauts, have reportedly kidnapped humans, had sexual encounters with them, taken them to underground realms, and how experiencers of both phenomena have also described the “missing time” element.

My own contribution (chapter three) explores the complex shamanic/DMT(dimethyltryptamine)/ayahuasca/psilocybin accounts of South America and the clinical DMT studies of psychiatrist Rick Strassman of New Mexico, and how fascinating “little people” and “alien” data emerged from those backgrounds. So a well rounded and historical perspective is presented within this volume, plus a terrific cover and some neat artistic illustrations through it’s pages.

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How to Hear the Voice of God

By Susan Shumsky, DD

New Page Books • A Division of The Career Press, Inc. • 3 Tice Road /PO Box 687 • Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417

2008, 192 pages, $16.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60163-010-0

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

In the last issue, we interviewed this author for you, and her message was loud and clear. You can learn to “hear the voice of God” instead of fear that if God were to actually answer your prayers or requests that it would mean that you’re suffering from some potentially dreadful mental disturbance and that you should seek psychiatric help immediately. Shumsky describes indepth her own long journey and quest for the spiritual truth that proves ever so elusive for most of us. Learn the secret behind her own discovery. It took her 20 years of intense soul searching and studying with the world famous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation, in ashrams in such diverse and exotic locations as India’s Himalayas and the Swiss Alps, before a student of meditation from another school of thought revealed to her an amazing secret: that she could access God directly without the help of a guru! Soon she was guided into a meditation practice that she describes was unlike anything she had experienced previously. She wrote of how she was led through various and incredible levels of awareness, what she described as the highways and byways of God consciousness, where the “still small voice” of the divine spoke directly to her, speaking words of love, comfort and peace.

This is what she shares in this book. The information and step-by-step guidance and techniques described are detailed and very informative. There are numerous testimonial accounts and statements of how the process has benefited hundreds of others. In addition, a helpful meditation audio CD is even included!